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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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I myself think that perhaps they would have been better advised to not be so logical. Do you know who wanted to take the coal cases? The labor men on the War Labor Board. They wanted to put John Lewis under somebody's thumb. He was operating as a free agent and every labor man was mad at him. He had withdrawn from everything. He wasn't playing with anybody. They wanted to cut him down to size. They were willing to make the other members of the War Labor Board sweat blood in order to cut John Lewis down to size and make him behave like anybody else.

Well, of course, for all the rulings that they made, he never did behave like everybody else. They made rules. They gave orders. Then he fixed it up With the coal operators in some practical way. I have no special admiration for Lewis, but I recognize that he's one of these men who won't be run into a mold. He never has been run into a mold and that type always interests and amuses me. He's a Welshman. He's not a New Englander. But New Englanders behave much the same way. They won't be run into any mold. They elude you, though usually not so picturesquely, and not with such vituperative language as John Lewis uses while he's doing it. But they elude you just the same. You issue the order, make the ruling, and they go right on doing it the way they know has always been the best way to do things. It's like the man who wouldn't give his reasons for leaving one of the Maine





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